X3: Ten Steps Closer to Hell (R), Pyro/Iceman.
Caring isn't supposed to hurt, and pain was never meant to be pretty.
Notes: This is a response to exisandohs's prompts. I'm pretty sure this isn't exactly how the prompts were intended, but once I had the idea in my head it wouldn't go away.
0
Everything Bobby knew about love he learned from his parents.
Then they took it all back, and he learned what John's known all along: love doesn't matter, because it never lasts.
Luckily, what they have together is something else entirely.
1
"You shouldn't have done that," Pyro says.
Bobby's mind is scattered, in too many places at once, and not sure what year it is--because for a minute there, he'd just been Bobby, and John had just been John.
They came here to stop the Brotherhood just like the police, but when the officers started firing the cure into the crowd, not separating X-Men from terrorists, he had started wondering, if only for a brief moment, if he was on the wrong side.
And even though John was dangerous, even though the cure was probably a necessary evil, when the time came, Bobby still moved in front of him.
"I'd jump in front of a real bullet for you, or anything else," John whispers, like a confession. "But not this. Never this. And you shouldn't have, either."
Then he's gone and Bobby is left alone, but it's okay, really, because the cure doesn't last either.
Nothing ever does.
2
John has scars on his back. They crisscross from one side to the other, spaced three inches apart almost perfectly, almost like art.
He never says where he got them, and Bobby can't remember, thinking back, if he'd had them before he left. They look old enough, but he's not sure they'll ever really fade.
"I don't owe you anything," John says breathlessly. "I didn't come to pay a debt."
"You never pay your debts," Bobby tells him.
"That's because I take I what want, and don't let people give me anything," John says. "You keep trying to break all of my rules."
Bobby knows it's wrong. This is no definition of love he's ever found, what they have, but he calls and John always comes when he does, so it's something. He thinks he's too tired to care enough to define it, so he just pulls him in for a kiss, traces John's scars with the tips of his fingers, and wonders at how upside down his world has become.
Because caring isn't supposed to hurt, and pain was never meant to be pretty.
3
He should probably have been more surprised.
It's the sun off the blade that wakes him, flashing in his eyes like a camera or light through glass. John is kneeling beside him, staring at the damn thing like his life depends on it, and maybe in his mind it does.
He sits up warily, because it's novel enough that he and John have managed to stay the entire night and wake with the other still there. The pattern usually went that one of them was gone before the morning. John, usually. "What are you doing?" he asks.
John's eyes are clouded when they raise, and he doesn't answer.
Bobby frowns and reaches out a hand. "Give me the knife," he says.
John laughs, like that's the funniest thing he's ever heard. John doesn't understand giving, Bobby remembers, only taking, so he lunges forward and pins him down, grabs his wrist and tightens his hold around it until the pressure causes John's fingers to loosen, and the knife falls from his hand.
He never really knows for sure which of them John had been planning to hurt.
4
John has a temper.
It's not exactly a secret, and when they meet, Bobby has taken to hiding John's lighter. It solves a few problems. Nothing gets burned and John can't leave until he has it back.
It also creates a few new ones, because John doesn't like being without it.
Bobby supposes he can understand. He went three months without being able to create ice with just a thought, three months of sitting there and concentrating and trying to call it up and nothing.
But Bobby's not as nice as he used to be, and some part of him likes having John powerless.
John searches the whole motel room, calling him every bad name he can remember, including a few new ones he probably picked up in the Brotherhood. He grabs things and hurls them behind him, nearly hitting Bobby with a lamp and a shoe and vase holding cheap plastic flowers that scatter across the floor.
It's almost funny, so Bobby starts laughing like he can't stop. He's gotten used to settling for almost, and really, he just needs a reason.
"You're dead when I find my lighter, you fucker," John tells him, but he's almost smiling. And almost is enough.
5
They've tried to kill each other a few times now.
Bobby's seen lots of movies where couples have love hate issues, but at least most of them seem to have lines they won't cross. John doesn't do boundaries, and as long as they're on different sides, he's not going to hold back.
He's not sure what started it this time. It could have been anything because it never took much. One minute they were kissing and whispering and the next John was slamming him into a wall and screaming at him to fucking knock it off.
Bobby pushes back and they end up on the floor. John won't stop, doesn't seem to hear a word he says, so he grabs the clunky old motel phone and uses the red spiral cord to tie John's wrists, and screams at him to stop, just stop.
John's breathing heavily and unevenly and his eyes are wild. He's like a cornered animal in times like this, so Bobby is a little taken aback that holding him down actually calms him, and brings him a little closer back to sanity.
When Bobby finally lets him go, he traces the bruises around John's wrists, and wonders if maybe John has unlocked something in him that would have been better off left untouched.
6
Eventually Rogue finds out where he's been going.
It doesn't seem to matter that they broke up before it ever started, she still runs right to Xavier. For his own good, she says.
Xavier sits across from him with his new face and his new everything and tells him he's going down a dark road. Bobby is tempted to tell him that he's one to talk, considering the fact he bodyjacked some helpless coma guy, but then he realizes he doesn't have to.
From his expression, Xavier has obviously heard his thoughts.
"This isn't you, Bobby," he says, calmly and kind of sad. "Let me help you. I can take it away."
Everyone has a breaking point; that place where one more thing lost is one thing too many and they stop caring about consequences and repercussions, and as Bobby feels his mind start to unravel, like Xavier is pulling at some loose string, and tugging it away, along with John, and John, and everything, he reaches his.
He incases himself with ice, and the invasion stops. It's not that he's shielded, but it's startled Xavier out of his trance, and that's enough.
Bobby leaves without looking back and chases his memories out the door. They all know he won't be coming back.
7
He sees it on the news along with everyone else.
The new Worthington Research Center, for a better, longer lasting cure--blown all to hell. It's not like it's hard to puzzle out who Magneto gave that particular assignment to. The newscaster says they could find no detonation device, no bomb remnants, and they won't, because it was pure untraceable fire.
Bobby wonders briefly how many people were in the building at the time, and starts pacing, admitting, if only to himself, that he's only concerned whether or not one person made it out of the fire alive.
The news said there were no suspects, and no one had been apprehended, but they weren't above a cover-up. These days, Worthington was trying to get mutant support, and it would send his cause back another year or two to let it get out that a mutant was the one trying to stop him.
It's hours later when John finally shows up, holding a hand to his blood soaked side, and Bobby is too weary to be caught off his guard.
8
He knows better than to take John to the hospital or dial 911. John's a wanted man, and things stopped working the way they were supposed to long before now. He carefully helps John lift his shirt off and then helps him lay back on the bed.
First Aid kits don't always come standard with seedy motel rooms but Bobby's caught the habit of keeping one around, and he spreads everything out across the stained floral comforter, with the kind of precision that used to have John calling him anal. He says nothing now.
The bullet went straight through, one side to the other, and John's breathing is labored but constant, so he's hoping it missed the lung. He cleans away the blood and then spreads the antiseptic, before stitching up the skin with a spool of blue thread he found in an old sewing kit.
"I'll fucking kill the bastard that did this."
It should have been John saying that, but Bobby is startled to recognize his own voice.
9
It's one of the first fights they have that involves words, because while they fight all the time about any number of things, they rarely say anything of importance at all. Their relationship thrives on the unspoken and the ignored, the compromises and all those times of looking away and looking away and pretending it's okay.
There's no coming to blows this time, because John can barely stand, let alone throw a punch.
"You can't keep doing this," Bobby snaps. "Jesus Christ, John, just look at yourself!"
John is pale and staggering, one hand braced on the wall, meant to look casual, but Bobby knows it's all that's holding him up. "Fuck you, Drake," he shouts. "I never asked you to leave the do-gooders, so don't you fucking dare ask me to leave the Brotherhood--"
"You're going to get yourself killed," Bobby snaps. "Magneto is--"
"Magneto is a fucking god, and they couldn't stop him, couldn't cure him, so don't you even--"
"He's an old man with a mission that no one wants anymore," Bobby interrupted. "The war is over, John. You lost. Get the fuck over it."
"It was a battle, not a war," John says, and his eyes are fever-bright and slightly manic. "You don't give up after one battle. You don't give up at all."
"We could leave," Bobby tells him, looking him in the eyes. "We don't have to fight anymore, we could just leave, go anywhere. Just think about it."
"Whatever, man, don't wait up," John says, and then he stumbles out the door. It's as close to acquiesce as Bobby's ever gotten from him, but John still gets the last word.
10
He follows him. He's crossed so many of his lines already there seems little reason not to. He's pretty sure there won't be anything but relief once he finally reaches the point where there's nothing he won't do for John.
He heads straight for the ruins of Worthington's newest fallen empire, and Bobby's not surprised. Magneto probably wants him to make sure nothing is left intact before the police remove the 'do not cross' line and let the scientists back in to recover what's left of their work.
He'd blame Magneto for sending him on a mission this early after being hurt, but Magneto doesn't leave things to chance. Bobby knows he only sent him because John never told him he'd been shot.
He hears shouting before he quite makes it inside, and starts running.
He sees John, thrown back against the wall, with his hand on his lighter, and then he sees the officer with the gun telling John to put it down. Bobby knows John. John couldn't put it down if he wanted, just isn't wired that way, can't lie down even if it kills him--so he does the only thing he can.
He pushes his hand forward, creating a blade of ice starting at his palm, and jams it straight through the officer's throat. The blood rushes out everywhere, deep red and warm, and a sickly cooper steam seems to hover right where it melts the ice at the base of his neck, but then he's falling and going quiet and it's done.
"Jesus," John says disbelievingly. "You killed him."
He looks up at Bobby like he doesn't know him anymore, and Bobby wonders if maybe he doesn't. He certainly doesn't recognize himself, these days, but it's too late to change again now. He grabs John's wrist and hauls him to his feet, and then they start running.
He keeps losing his grip on John because his hand is slick with the blood, and he knows it should bother him. It's funny the way it doesn't.
Notes: This is a response to exisandohs's prompts. I'm pretty sure this isn't exactly how the prompts were intended, but once I had the idea in my head it wouldn't go away.
0
Everything Bobby knew about love he learned from his parents.
Then they took it all back, and he learned what John's known all along: love doesn't matter, because it never lasts.
Luckily, what they have together is something else entirely.
1
"You shouldn't have done that," Pyro says.
Bobby's mind is scattered, in too many places at once, and not sure what year it is--because for a minute there, he'd just been Bobby, and John had just been John.
They came here to stop the Brotherhood just like the police, but when the officers started firing the cure into the crowd, not separating X-Men from terrorists, he had started wondering, if only for a brief moment, if he was on the wrong side.
And even though John was dangerous, even though the cure was probably a necessary evil, when the time came, Bobby still moved in front of him.
"I'd jump in front of a real bullet for you, or anything else," John whispers, like a confession. "But not this. Never this. And you shouldn't have, either."
Then he's gone and Bobby is left alone, but it's okay, really, because the cure doesn't last either.
Nothing ever does.
2
John has scars on his back. They crisscross from one side to the other, spaced three inches apart almost perfectly, almost like art.
He never says where he got them, and Bobby can't remember, thinking back, if he'd had them before he left. They look old enough, but he's not sure they'll ever really fade.
"I don't owe you anything," John says breathlessly. "I didn't come to pay a debt."
"You never pay your debts," Bobby tells him.
"That's because I take I what want, and don't let people give me anything," John says. "You keep trying to break all of my rules."
Bobby knows it's wrong. This is no definition of love he's ever found, what they have, but he calls and John always comes when he does, so it's something. He thinks he's too tired to care enough to define it, so he just pulls him in for a kiss, traces John's scars with the tips of his fingers, and wonders at how upside down his world has become.
Because caring isn't supposed to hurt, and pain was never meant to be pretty.
3
He should probably have been more surprised.
It's the sun off the blade that wakes him, flashing in his eyes like a camera or light through glass. John is kneeling beside him, staring at the damn thing like his life depends on it, and maybe in his mind it does.
He sits up warily, because it's novel enough that he and John have managed to stay the entire night and wake with the other still there. The pattern usually went that one of them was gone before the morning. John, usually. "What are you doing?" he asks.
John's eyes are clouded when they raise, and he doesn't answer.
Bobby frowns and reaches out a hand. "Give me the knife," he says.
John laughs, like that's the funniest thing he's ever heard. John doesn't understand giving, Bobby remembers, only taking, so he lunges forward and pins him down, grabs his wrist and tightens his hold around it until the pressure causes John's fingers to loosen, and the knife falls from his hand.
He never really knows for sure which of them John had been planning to hurt.
4
John has a temper.
It's not exactly a secret, and when they meet, Bobby has taken to hiding John's lighter. It solves a few problems. Nothing gets burned and John can't leave until he has it back.
It also creates a few new ones, because John doesn't like being without it.
Bobby supposes he can understand. He went three months without being able to create ice with just a thought, three months of sitting there and concentrating and trying to call it up and nothing.
But Bobby's not as nice as he used to be, and some part of him likes having John powerless.
John searches the whole motel room, calling him every bad name he can remember, including a few new ones he probably picked up in the Brotherhood. He grabs things and hurls them behind him, nearly hitting Bobby with a lamp and a shoe and vase holding cheap plastic flowers that scatter across the floor.
It's almost funny, so Bobby starts laughing like he can't stop. He's gotten used to settling for almost, and really, he just needs a reason.
"You're dead when I find my lighter, you fucker," John tells him, but he's almost smiling. And almost is enough.
5
They've tried to kill each other a few times now.
Bobby's seen lots of movies where couples have love hate issues, but at least most of them seem to have lines they won't cross. John doesn't do boundaries, and as long as they're on different sides, he's not going to hold back.
He's not sure what started it this time. It could have been anything because it never took much. One minute they were kissing and whispering and the next John was slamming him into a wall and screaming at him to fucking knock it off.
Bobby pushes back and they end up on the floor. John won't stop, doesn't seem to hear a word he says, so he grabs the clunky old motel phone and uses the red spiral cord to tie John's wrists, and screams at him to stop, just stop.
John's breathing heavily and unevenly and his eyes are wild. He's like a cornered animal in times like this, so Bobby is a little taken aback that holding him down actually calms him, and brings him a little closer back to sanity.
When Bobby finally lets him go, he traces the bruises around John's wrists, and wonders if maybe John has unlocked something in him that would have been better off left untouched.
6
Eventually Rogue finds out where he's been going.
It doesn't seem to matter that they broke up before it ever started, she still runs right to Xavier. For his own good, she says.
Xavier sits across from him with his new face and his new everything and tells him he's going down a dark road. Bobby is tempted to tell him that he's one to talk, considering the fact he bodyjacked some helpless coma guy, but then he realizes he doesn't have to.
From his expression, Xavier has obviously heard his thoughts.
"This isn't you, Bobby," he says, calmly and kind of sad. "Let me help you. I can take it away."
Everyone has a breaking point; that place where one more thing lost is one thing too many and they stop caring about consequences and repercussions, and as Bobby feels his mind start to unravel, like Xavier is pulling at some loose string, and tugging it away, along with John, and John, and everything, he reaches his.
He incases himself with ice, and the invasion stops. It's not that he's shielded, but it's startled Xavier out of his trance, and that's enough.
Bobby leaves without looking back and chases his memories out the door. They all know he won't be coming back.
7
He sees it on the news along with everyone else.
The new Worthington Research Center, for a better, longer lasting cure--blown all to hell. It's not like it's hard to puzzle out who Magneto gave that particular assignment to. The newscaster says they could find no detonation device, no bomb remnants, and they won't, because it was pure untraceable fire.
Bobby wonders briefly how many people were in the building at the time, and starts pacing, admitting, if only to himself, that he's only concerned whether or not one person made it out of the fire alive.
The news said there were no suspects, and no one had been apprehended, but they weren't above a cover-up. These days, Worthington was trying to get mutant support, and it would send his cause back another year or two to let it get out that a mutant was the one trying to stop him.
It's hours later when John finally shows up, holding a hand to his blood soaked side, and Bobby is too weary to be caught off his guard.
8
He knows better than to take John to the hospital or dial 911. John's a wanted man, and things stopped working the way they were supposed to long before now. He carefully helps John lift his shirt off and then helps him lay back on the bed.
First Aid kits don't always come standard with seedy motel rooms but Bobby's caught the habit of keeping one around, and he spreads everything out across the stained floral comforter, with the kind of precision that used to have John calling him anal. He says nothing now.
The bullet went straight through, one side to the other, and John's breathing is labored but constant, so he's hoping it missed the lung. He cleans away the blood and then spreads the antiseptic, before stitching up the skin with a spool of blue thread he found in an old sewing kit.
"I'll fucking kill the bastard that did this."
It should have been John saying that, but Bobby is startled to recognize his own voice.
9
It's one of the first fights they have that involves words, because while they fight all the time about any number of things, they rarely say anything of importance at all. Their relationship thrives on the unspoken and the ignored, the compromises and all those times of looking away and looking away and pretending it's okay.
There's no coming to blows this time, because John can barely stand, let alone throw a punch.
"You can't keep doing this," Bobby snaps. "Jesus Christ, John, just look at yourself!"
John is pale and staggering, one hand braced on the wall, meant to look casual, but Bobby knows it's all that's holding him up. "Fuck you, Drake," he shouts. "I never asked you to leave the do-gooders, so don't you fucking dare ask me to leave the Brotherhood--"
"You're going to get yourself killed," Bobby snaps. "Magneto is--"
"Magneto is a fucking god, and they couldn't stop him, couldn't cure him, so don't you even--"
"He's an old man with a mission that no one wants anymore," Bobby interrupted. "The war is over, John. You lost. Get the fuck over it."
"It was a battle, not a war," John says, and his eyes are fever-bright and slightly manic. "You don't give up after one battle. You don't give up at all."
"We could leave," Bobby tells him, looking him in the eyes. "We don't have to fight anymore, we could just leave, go anywhere. Just think about it."
"Whatever, man, don't wait up," John says, and then he stumbles out the door. It's as close to acquiesce as Bobby's ever gotten from him, but John still gets the last word.
10
He follows him. He's crossed so many of his lines already there seems little reason not to. He's pretty sure there won't be anything but relief once he finally reaches the point where there's nothing he won't do for John.
He heads straight for the ruins of Worthington's newest fallen empire, and Bobby's not surprised. Magneto probably wants him to make sure nothing is left intact before the police remove the 'do not cross' line and let the scientists back in to recover what's left of their work.
He'd blame Magneto for sending him on a mission this early after being hurt, but Magneto doesn't leave things to chance. Bobby knows he only sent him because John never told him he'd been shot.
He hears shouting before he quite makes it inside, and starts running.
He sees John, thrown back against the wall, with his hand on his lighter, and then he sees the officer with the gun telling John to put it down. Bobby knows John. John couldn't put it down if he wanted, just isn't wired that way, can't lie down even if it kills him--so he does the only thing he can.
He pushes his hand forward, creating a blade of ice starting at his palm, and jams it straight through the officer's throat. The blood rushes out everywhere, deep red and warm, and a sickly cooper steam seems to hover right where it melts the ice at the base of his neck, but then he's falling and going quiet and it's done.
"Jesus," John says disbelievingly. "You killed him."
He looks up at Bobby like he doesn't know him anymore, and Bobby wonders if maybe he doesn't. He certainly doesn't recognize himself, these days, but it's too late to change again now. He grabs John's wrist and hauls him to his feet, and then they start running.
He keeps losing his grip on John because his hand is slick with the blood, and he knows it should bother him. It's funny the way it doesn't.